I. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to methods and systems for providing texture tiling and mirroring. More particularly, the present invention relates to providing non-power-of-two texture tiling and mirroring using a displacement map.
II. Background Information
Tiling and mirroring are processes for displaying objects side by side on a computer display. For example, a “tile” command in a graphical interface may repeat a particular object, element, or image in a certain row and column order. In some situations, graphics cards within conventional computing devices support tiling or mirroring of textures that have power-of-two dimensions. Few of them, however, support texture tiling or mirroring with non-power-of-two dimensions. While, developers have traditionally chosen power-of-two textures because they have traditionally been the only type supported, this often causes problems because power-of-two textures are very limiting.
Other conventional tiling processes include retessellating an area being drawn. This often causes problems because retessellating is both complicated and central processing unit (CPU) intensive. While some developers may be content to use power-of-two textures, other hardware accelerated platforms may benefit from tiling non-power-of-two textures.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for improved methods and systems for texture tiling and mirroring. Furthermore, there is a need for providing non-power-of-two texture tiling and mirroring using, for example, a displacement map.